All you have to do to win....

Prodigies.

Any words that I write here will only distract you from the more important stuff that follows. :) Enjoy!


Connie Talbot, Age : 6, Singer





Shakira, Kinder Garden Student, Age : 4 Salsa Dancer



Kaitlyn Maher , Kinder Garden Student, Age : 4 Singer

The Pursuit(?) of Happiness

One day the teacher asked her 6 year old student what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, " Happy". The teacher then told him that he had gotten the question wrong. What an irony!

Happiness is a state to be in, not a goal to achieve. It is the default state of a human being. No man can live in his past or his future, yet we keep worrying, unmindful of the joys that they are surrounded by. Discover the happiness you already have. Have a happy day! :-)

Musical Prodigies

They are Naturals. No elaboration needed. Seldom do we see sights where the song rendered impromptu on stage by 14 year olds seems better than the original. And more so when the people who originally sang those songs are musical prodigies themselves. :-)

I only wish that she compete once with Krishnamoorthy. Ah, Music is divine. May god bless them. 

To get a flavor of their standards, please watch these videos.

Do see the kind of variations they can bring about- from Rustic, to classic to western and Arabic. Stunning!

She

He was the man she loved most. He would do anything for her. Their love transcended all physical, mental and emotional barriers and was so pure and selfless that people were jealous when they walked together. They were each other's best friend, in the truest sense. She confided everything to him, all her secrets, wishes and desires. He simply loved everything about her, and when he was with her, he seemed to forget all his worries. She was his world.

Finally, on one day, he was born. The world rejoiced at the new arrival. She had endured pain, was barely conscious, yet when she saw him, all her pain vanished into nothingness. The noise was blurred. He was a part of her. Knowingly she smiled, as she slipped into the bliss of oblivion.

The Cooking Codes.

Without much ado, i jump into the topic... Sometimes Cooking and coding seem to be greatly similar. 


Both of them have Methods, called recipes in one case and algorithms in the other.

Both have parameters to be tuned, an input to be given, and a precise output that is expected.

In both cases, partial output is totally worthless.

There is a huge huge gap between the method conceived and its implementation.

Both require utmost concentration for a novice, and though sometimes they can be automated, the resultant product is not always the one desired.


Both have to be learnt with practice. The experts can never "teach" how to do it. Usually, both are done by trial and error in the beginning stages.

Both can be 'learnt' in a matter of days, but take years to master!

The superficial similarities are not the only ones.

Both can be outsourced, although it does cost a lot to do so. Neither of these is learnt unless (1)there is a life-threatening emergency to do so. or (2) if it turns out to be a passion for him/her.

Both are absolutely drab and a waste of time to some people whilst some others consider it an exalted form of art , a medium of ultimate sophisticated self expression.

The bosses always want the result, and are not concerned about how difficult it was to get it done.

The number of books abound for both, but the quality does not necessarily improve by the reading of books.

Its extremely trivial to make errors in either, and once the errors are made, its very very very difficult to find and correct.

Both have their time and space complexities, and that cant always be estimated beforehand.

Discoveries of new recipies/hacks are mostly done by lucky accidents.

Each has its beauty, a subtle indication of the fine precision and skill that has been chiselled into it. This is often only pursued by the people who have the 'taste' for such things. For others, one recipe seems as lifeless and boring as the others.

In both these skills, if the heart is not in the job it is very difficult to accomplish much and the time and money spent does not always add up to the quality.

"Too many cooks spoil the broth" holds true in both the domains.

Both skills turn to be life critical at times, and become vulnerable to Murphy's laws too, and precisely at that time.

Lastly, there is always scope for improvement in both!

Oh, somethings missing.... Ah .. A moral ... So here it goes ...

So, the next time your grand mother asks you a doubt in computers, do not be arrogant. She would be a better coder than you, if only she plunged into the domain. She already knows the tricks of the trade. [:P] Oh, i forgot , the reverse does not always hold true.

PS : Sorry for making you read this mokkai.

At Home...

Once upon a time, when this title could not be abbreviated to ~ or a bunch of HTML  ; when it still referred to a place one need not wear any masks, there lived a 9-year old boy called Karthik.

 He loved his home, quite understandibly, and more so during holidays. He waited all year for his summer holidays and now that they were here, he was totally overjoyed. On the very first day, he asked his father to wake him up at 5:45 am, astonishing him. After all, one could not afford to lose holidays sleeping, much unlike the schooldays wherein he had to be dragged out of sleep. 

His father was punctual, and he did get up, brushed his teeth and put on the TV and computer together. Multitasking was not just in the domain of Computers. His elder sister woke up slowly, and was shocked to see him awake. In fact, he had seriously considered putting off the fan, and pouring some water over his sister's head as she slept, but decided against it. Not that he was afraid of her; it was just that it was against his principles to attack an unarmed person. 

His sister smiled at him encouragingly and sat near him with the tumbler of coffee as he played Age of Empires ( without cheatcodes) . He tightened his hold on the mouse. He certainly was not going to give her the computer to program/watch movies. She smiled again and appreciated his strategies. He started worrying now.  He told her clearly that he would not relinquish the hold on the computer, and if she put a password there in his absence ( as he clearly suspected ), she would have to face dire consequences. She was annoyed, and left the place. He liked it that way. 

At 12:00 noon, as he had conquered most of the world, his mother, for the 28th time, ordered him to go to bath. He decided that he must have some rest too. He collected his accessories - that included 3 GI-Joes , Chess coins, 2 paper boats, and a bouncing ball and went to bath. 

He planned his naval strategies meticulously on the water in the bucket, with the very simulation of a naval battle that he was soon going to launch. In the midst, somethings caught his attention. He was amazed how the color of water changed from White to Colorless; why the water from the tap took a cylindrical shape( even after coming out). He came back and as he gulped his food, he asked his doubts to his sister. His sister did not bother to even look up from the thick book she was reading. 

Seething with anger, he wondered what they learnt in higher classes. He then watched back-to-back movies of Harry Potter on Pogo.  In the evening, he was ordered by his mother to write the Tables.  He did not understand why he had to write it when the calculator could do it in an instant. "Because the calculator is not allowed in an Exam" , came the reply.  " Why?". "Because they want you to learn tables." He was certainly not impressed with the circular reasoning.  He strongly felt that he would reform the educational system when he grew up.

Grudgingly, he wrote all the tables from 3 to 14, even as he saw his sister doing some programming on the computer. Curious, he asked her what it was. She explained that it was a complicated sort algorithm. He was aghast. They did the questions like " Arrange the following in increasing order " in the 2nd Std and his sister was still stuck on that. He thought AOE was much better than spending 2 hours to write a program to arrange 5 numbers in an increasing order. Nevertheless, his sister did not appreciate his comments, quite expectedly. 

Once he got bored of AOE, he went back to his mother pestering her to make sweets that day(since it marked the commencement of his holidays) . Sitting on the cool balcony with his mother, gazing at the endless stars and the drifting clouds lit brightly with the moonlight,  he wondered what he had done that day. Nothing, came the honest reply from his heart. He persisted. He asked himself if anything he could do would have made a difference to this infinite cosmos? He went further and wondered if anything anyone  could do would make a difference to it. The answer was still negative. " Why then do the adults spend all their time in worry and complaints when none of their actions are actually of no great consequence? " He would soon understand, or quit the attempt to understand as people all around him had done... For the time being, he kept contemplating...

Marcos

Ever Heard of them? Chances are that you have never even come across this term. But they are one of the most elite forces in the world, and are the best  - in talent, will, confidence, dedication and perfection. 

The reason why that is so is not too hard to fathom. Just hover over the video here! If you have time, you could as well see the entire video.

I salute their dedication. Jai Hind!

The Unique Batch that is...

28th November 2007  - The last day of classwork at BITS Pilani Goa Campus , and the last day we attended classes there as proud Kernelites. Exactly one year is up, and I was flooded with memories when I saw the "raw" videos that we shot, on this very day last year. Now, one year later, my friends are at different places  - most of them core professionals now ( some entrepreneurs too) , few still unchanged, and a fewer are students still. /* No.. We did not  fail. */

****T6***** - an ID that is now unique to just 45 ( +1+3) of us, a bond that all of us share - not to mention the perennial confusion as to what it really meant and whether it was engineering after all. The wonderful journey started in 2004, with us treading on a path no-one else had ever explored before. Well, i can confidently declare now that the journey through the college has been as colorful and as wonderful as the journey to it...

The first year went in a hurry - with sparse interaction between us. Maybe we were more worried about Thevenin and Norton.  I, for one, never got to figure that out completely. :( But that does not matter. Not now anyways. We had our first interaction with a question " How many of your names start with "B" ? " From the second day, I have been guilty of occupying 2 seats. And no !, I am not that fat! [ You can check in the photos below ] .The second year was enjoyable, despite the Mini-Tests. The third year was supposedly serious with CDCs hanging by our heads. The fourth year - I wont comment.

We were quite aloof, right from the very beginning, and united as a class- so much that for the first two years, it never even occured to us that we must have an association. I was really fortunate to be  in a class where the people really cared about each other, and the teachers were more like seniors. We did a host of projects - each one of them involving an intense argument [:P] finally culminating in a desperate Nightout. How can I ever forget the Fan regulator, a project that we had no clue about till the penultimate day. The doubts which we had would have put the inventor of the regulator to shame. Fortunately , my ingenious teammates were the saviours! 

 Who can forget the rigorous preparation for Quark-06, a feat that was repeated at the Apogee... There were wonderful leaders who emerged, and they were role models for the rest of us. For that matter, each member of the class displayed some unique and rare virtues - something I have been awed by.

There were certain remarkable moments too. Infosys Dinners. The blue dress drama. Samosas in the class. Commentary at the back. Mini-tests. Birthday Celebrations. Kabo-de-Rama Trip. Videos. World Cup Victory. Quark. Airport Plaza. The C-Chakra( which i guess only 2 other people know about), Electives' Worries, Pangs before placements... The list goes on...  Our class was certainly unique in more ways than one. Caring, united, always enthusiastic! 

Well, should I end with one question, one of the first we were ever put  across - "How many of our names start with 'B'? ... :) If you know the answer, ( as was given in the class) do comment :).

At College

9-year old Karthik was overjoyed! His summer holidays were on. His sister had her college reopening the next week. He simply enjoyed seeing  his sister prepare to go to college. He accompanied his mother to do some shopping, which usually translated to getting to see hundreds of cars speeding by, and millions of people moving about. 

He always wondered, what business did so many people have lazing around. Surely, not all of them could be working on the road! His joy was multiplied since he did not have school and his sister was preparing for college. He always had this tendency to show off his idleness, just to annoy her. He deliberately played Cricket 2007 for around 7 hours per day, with his own commentary following that of Mr. Boycott. Needless to say, his sister wasn't amused. But then, brothers dont get such golden chances everyday... 

The happiest thing for him was that he was going to visit her college too. He was thrilled. He often imagined college to be a cool place where the teachers no longer caned their students, most homeworks were given to be ignored and where people could go in color dress and without any schoolbag. ..

The joy was overwhelming when he arrived at her college. He wished her all the best, and made it a point to tell her what his plans for the rest of the holidays were....  For the first day, he decided to sneak into a class, to see what the people learnt. And since he was tiny, he couldn't be seen except by the guy behind him, who, to his surprise was quietly dozing ... 

The professor came, well he did look like a teacher,... he never understood the distinction. He wrote the topic on the board, some "Dynamic Programs." He wanted to cry out the misspelling of programme - his English Miss would have been aghast to have seen such a thing, but decided against it. Just at the time, he saw a boy, come in, with a big schoolbag. He wondered what he kept inside the bag, that noone else seemed to need. Maybe it was the books... or clothes.. or laundry... To break the reverie, that boy took out a notebook, and started writing. What was he writing? He had no idea. According to him, the professor had just written a wrong spelling on the board... Wierdos exist everywhere, he concluded. 

There were many peculiar things he observed in the class. There was a platform. The teacher did not shout "KEEP QUIET!!" even once during the period. People came in strange dresses. Noone sat in the front row. Everyone, well wierdos excluded, had just one notebook... and they were not collected at the end of the class for correction. For one thing, he doubted if anybody had written anything there. Overall, he felt amazed. 

Now he began to envy his sister for being in  a college. He fantasized that when he would go to college, he would have a flying motorbike ( surely they must be invented by then!! ), cooling glasses, a jeans pant and a t-shirt with lights!(well... maybe bcos then he could be a bright student!) ...

He came back and wondered. what did the people in the class do that he did not. He was very happy with himself. He had heard a number of times from elders that one's own happiness was what mattered in life. And he was happy enough with himself. True, he could be happier if his Mom had got him the GI-Joe and the new model of the Hot-wheels, but then there would always be another shopping session, he reassured himself. He wondered why he should grow up. Maybe to spell Programme wrong, maybe to speak to the computer more than to his own friends, maybe to complicate things that were really simple and then to derive pleasure in simplifying them, and maybe to live a happy life after all...